About Us

Thanks to the generous, ongoing financial support of friends and family, we now have a four room primary building as well as several pit latrines and a kitchen structure housing our cooking fires. We have also recently secured the house on the property which, as of the 2023 school year, will be home to our office and Grade 3 class.

In our next phase of building, we plan to add a dedicated pre-primary building for our youngest students, to install play equipment on the playground, and to build a small room behind the office for guests or new teachers needing a space before they become established. 

In addition to building, we are still partially dependent on outside funding to cover our operating costs of food, salaries, fuel, and ongoing repairs and miscellaneous supplies. 

Here's an estimate of the costs to keep the school running  and moving forward for the 2023 school year:

• Additional security guard for the year, including uniforms: $750*

• Materials for our Montessori toddler classroom: $1,000

• Playground equipment and landscaping: $1,000

• First computers: $1,000

• Repair and update newly acquired office: $1,000

• Additional chairs, tables, desks, and shelves: $1,500

• Fence and gate: $2,000

• Car maintenance and fuel: $4,000*

• Breakfast and lunch for the school year: $8,000*

• Staff salaries for the school year: $13,500*

• Complete purchase of the property: $17,000

• Building materials for the pre-primary building including four classrooms and a small, enclosed outdoor play area: $33,000

With the contributions of those from outside our economic system here in Mambai, what may have taken many years can be achievable in a matter of months. To support us in our efforts to provide the children of our village with an excellent education, we have partnered with Sowilo Africa, a non-profit organization based in Portland, Oregon. Sowilo Africa has worked with projects in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and have enthusiastically agreed to offer their support for our project as well. We are happy to share that, through this partnership, contributors will be able to make tax-deductible donations.

*These expenses will be partially covered by students through tuition, and will not be fully covered until enrollment increases to a critical mass.

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We believe it is important to acknowledge 

the imbalance of power and privilege that is inherently present in our request. 

Although our plan to be financially solvent includes also enrolling students from more wealthy surrounding communities, our young school is currently mainly comprised of students from our local village. The average income for most of our neighbors here in Mambai varies from around $50 to $100 per month. That comes out to about $12-25 per week.

When we look at the cost of purchasing our land, the one acre we purchased was sold to us at about $30,000. Meaning, that $30,000 for the land represents an average of around 37.5 years worth of income without spending anything on living expenses. 

An example of a common day's meals here would be milk tea with fried bread for breakfast, rice and cabbage for lunch, and ugali  (boiled cornmeal) with kale for dinner. The total cost for a family of four, for one day, comes to around $4.50.  

When compared to anyone working full time in the U.S., no matter how low the pay, the inequality becomes obvious. We know that such vastly disparate experiences can create a sense of "otherness", as it may be difficult to imagine a life so different from our own. 

Yet, our community is made up of mothers who feed and bathe their children, who wake in the night to comfort them. It's made of fathers who check their children's homework and watch the news in the evenings... and some who come home late at night after drinking all evening with their buddies. It's made up of children who play at the neighbor's house and take an extra candy when offered, who feed the dog and sometimes hide when it's time to take a bath. Life in our village is so completely different from life in the U.S., and also people are people, no matter where you go.

For this reason, as you contribute, we request that you do so with an attitude of respect for our shared humanity, an acknowledgement of whatever privilege you have that allows you to help (and, if you're willing, reflecting on how you got that privilege), and an appreciation for the opportunity to actively contribute to creating justice where there had previously been injustice.

Jambo!

We are Elliot Ajega, from Kenya, and Sacha Chabaga, originally from America. (That's us with our parents in the photo!) We got married in Kenya in early 2019 and we live together on Elliot's family property in the village of Mambai, where he grew up. Here in Mambai, many of our neighbors work on farms growing tea for the local factory, maize as the staple food, and grasses used for livestock.

Along with our neighbors, our 8th grade niece who stays with us attends the local public school just up the road. The three public schools within 30 minute walking distance of our village are run by the government and the only choices for primary education. They have an average class size of around 55 students. Teachers struggle to implement the new curriculum due to lack of resources and training. Many students fall through the cracks. For example, we know more second graders who struggle to identify letters and sounds than we do those who can read.

Our kids deserve better.

In response to requests from community members, and in honor of our commitment to helping the children in our community to reach their full potential, our family has taken the lead in creating another option for students in our area.

Because Sacha has the privilege of direct connections in the U.S., we have decided to turn to those with access to more resources to help move this project forward in a way that wouldn't otherwise be possible. In Kenya, property and building expenses are frankly exorbitant (tens of thousands of dollars) in relation to the average income of the parents at our school (a few hundred per month). 

That said, once the major expenses of purchasing and building are complete, and once the school is established with steady enrollment, the day to day expense of running of the school will be majorly self-sustaining. Some anticipated exceptions include further expansion (we have goals to add a computer lab, library, swimming pool, and 24-hour clinic, all of which will also serve the wider community) as well as a scholarship program which we hope to develop in the coming years.

 A bit of background:

In January, 2021, our community decided to reopen a nursery school which had been running for many years and closed just a few years ago due to lack of management. In Kenya, a nursery school often includes three years: Baby Class (what our school calls Early Learners), Pre-Primary One (PP1), and Pre-Primary Two (PP2). We began with PP1 and PP2. By February, 2021, we had forty students between the two classes. Parents of our PP2 students began asking about adding a Grade 1 class so that their students could continue in our school.

After a lot of consultation with local institutions, meetings with community members and parents, and research into school registration with the government, we decided to open a full primary school. By our third school year*, thanks entirely to the generosity of our friends and family abroad, we were operating from a new property and school building. With this decision, we have committed ourselves to providing the best quality education we can so that the potential of the children in our village can be fulfilled and the latent talents they have to contribute to the world won't be wasted.

*During the pandemic, Kenya closed schools entirely. So, after the first term in 2020, ending in April, schools were closed until January, 2021 when they resumed the 2020 school year. The following two school years were then squeezed into one and a half calendar years in an effort to catch up, thus making April, 2022 the beginning of our third school year in operation. The 2023 school year, beginning in late January and ending in early November, will bring us almost back to the normal calendar.